Irkutsk Oblast, located in Eastern Siberia, is looking for additional energy sources due to the increased rates of crypto mining.
With the region closely bordering China, and Chinese miners selling off rigs due to an all-out ban on crypto mining, Irkutsk has become a hotspot for Russian crypto miners. However, mining in the region might have to pause for a while due to a shortage of energy supplies.
According to a post by TASS News Agency, Irkutsk has faced multiple outages in 2021, because of the energy consumption that increased drastically in contrast with 2020. Likewise, the energy price in the region is about 4 times cheaper than in other Russian cities.
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This led to the obvious conclusion that crypto mining was the root cause of the outages. According to the CEO of Irkutskenergo Oleg Prichko told reporters at TASS that the increased demand for electricity was indeed caused by crypto miners, stating:
"There are a lot of trucks transporting equipment from China that has become unnecessary there because of the ban. There is a lot of practically free equipment there, and it migrates to the Irkutsk region."
Likewise, there were instances of organized groups stealing mining equipment which demonstrates the high demand for crypto mining rigs.
According to Andrey Zhbanov, who is the Head of Criminal Investigations at Russia’s MIA for Irkutsk, there were people who held mining equipment even in dog houses. On a different note, in 2022, thefts, related to minings rigs in the region, went from once per month to basically once per day.
Zhbanov thinks that in order to solve the problem, the region needs to impose a complete ban on crypto mining, while the director of Irkutsk Electric Grid Company Evgeny Vechkanov suggested taxing crypto mining and making it an "entrepreneurial activity", so those who mine crypto would have larger electrical bills.
Similar situations have occurred in other regions of the world. In late December of 2021, Iran paused all crypto operations in order to save energy for winter, while authorities in Kosovo started confiscating mining rigs to comply with the recommendations of the Technical Committee on Emergency Measures for Energy Supply.
